What the COVID-19 Public Inquiry Needs to Address

Last week, we invited Daily Sceptic readers to submit suggestions of questions or topics that the U.K. COVID-19 Public Inquiry – which is presently consulting on its terms of reference, closing April 7th – ought to address. Here are some of the suggestions.

• How did the Public Health Act come to overrule basic rights?
• The classification of ‘cases’, Covid deaths, and the use of mass PCR and LFT testing in healthy people.
• Lack of cost/benefit analysis of measures, including not estimating the quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) lost by everyone. Whether the three lockdowns were justified from a health standpoint and from an overall cost benefit standpoint.
• Divisive nature of Government policy, asking people to report their neighbours and discriminating against and demonising the non-vaccinated.
• The lack of a clear exit strategy when imposing the lockdown measures.
• The evidence for the claim that the ’vaccines are safe’ and for the quickly shifting goalposts of ages to be vaccinated.
• How can you claim it was for health when you locked down gyms and leisure centres? Particularly as some leisure centre gyms have GP referral schemes and are part of cardiac rehab phase 4.
• Did the Government consider the impact on the drop in tax revenue, which funds the NHS, as a result of business closures and people losing their jobs?
• How many people died because of the lockdowns, through delayed treatment, suicide and by other means?
• Why did the Government lock down when it had determined that COVID-19 was not a high consequence infectious disease?
• One of the worst aspects of Government restrictions was that power was given to thousands of managers, proprietors and other operators of businesses, which enabled them to dictate to their workers and staff just what should be done. That the measures were more often than not irrational and counterintuitive was ignored. With the various relaxations that have taken place, some of these people have continued to march, bark, hector and bully more or less unimpeded.
• Why were so few swabs available for sample collection in 2020?
• Why has the MHRA not made any comment or public report on the monthly Yellow Card adverse event record? Surely, its job is to examine this information to determine if it is reliable, understated or overstated, and to make recommendations as the regulator? If another medicine was producing these reports would they just keep logging numbers without any comment? And if they have been advised not to comment, by whom?
• How were mandates implemented without any scientific backing? I am thinking about the Rule of 6, not allowing sitting on a bench outside when walking, the scotch egg debacle, where you were only allowed to sit down in a pub when there was a substantial meal, the mask mandates overall, but in particular having to wear a mask when walking in the pub but being allowed to take the mask off when sitting down, etc.
• The use of the fear narrative by Government bodies such as Public Health England (now UKHSA).
• Why was the Coronavirus Act extended for so long each time?

• Writing as a doctor, I would like to know the veracity of clinical diagnosis of death ‘with Covid’. In my view, a review of all patient clinical notes and imaging by an independent panel should occur for a selection of NHS hospitals treating affected patients during 2020-2021. We should be absolutely clear whether Covid was the predominant cause of morbidity and mortality. The whole theatre of shutting down society was driven by irrational fear, in my opinion. A central issue is the over-emphasis on laboratory tests rather than clinical symptoms and signs of disease. I have contributed my experience of the time to Parliament.
• I believe the current terms should be extended to look at the adverse effects of Covid restrictions on children and young people. These include:
  1. The effect of face masks and other restrictions on the development and speech of babies and children.
  2. The impact on children with special needs and their families of the removal of support services such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy and respite care during the pandemic.
  3. The rise in mental health problems amongst children during the pandemic.
  4. The impact on young people who left school during the pandemic when there was a severe shortage of apprenticeships and employment.
• I think the inquiry should look at the following topics:
  1. The decision to ignore WHO guidelines on what should count as a Covid death and instead count any death within 28 days (initially 90 days) of a positive test. This makes the numbers look worse than they actually are by allowing deaths from other causes to count as Covid deaths.
  2. The decision to deliberately frighten the public into compliance and to bend the available information to fit that narrative.
• Whistleblowers contributing to the inquiry will need support and protection.
• There is only one question that needs answering in my view and that is “How should the next pandemic be managed?” This question needs to be answered for a range viruses with different transmission and death rates. The resulting plans should then be placed in the public domain.
• What is the infection fatality rate (IFR) of a virus that will lead to Government imposing future restrictions? There should be a bar set in law that is met before restrictions can even be considered in the future.
• The inquiry should look into the impact of lockdowns on the mental health on those who were single and living alone – especially given the fact that those in Government seemed to enjoy relative freedom to develop personal relationships during that period.
• Why did SAGE predict the first peak in June 2020, when it was very clear it would peak in April? That is key, because it was the prime cause of the panic which then ensued, and it raises the question: why on earth were people who got such a simple forecast so dramatically wrong allowed to continue to advise the Government?
• Why isn’t the inquiry looking at the moral problems posed by the pandemic? Why did politicians not articulate the rights of patients to refuse treatment? Why did no-one in the medical profession remind us that consent is the cornerstone of all medical practice? Why did the Government allow the denigration of ‘anti-vaxxers’?
• Given the track-record of Professor Neil Ferguson over many years, of which the low point was perhaps the cull of several million farm animals, what was the justification for canvassing and heeding his advice in this case?
• My general practitioner declined to issue me a prescription for ivermectin and it quickly became impossible to source this treatment online. Who made this policy and why was this not made public at the time?
• Why was it thought necessary to ban several substances that had been approved for decades and with good safety records, thus potentially allowing people to die while waiting for the ‘panacea’ of the vaccines to arrive? Even if those treatments had been useless, what harm would have come of their potentially prophylactic use?
• How can supposedly democratic countries guarantee they are actually democratic? Democracy stands on the foundations of free speech and opinion, yet both of these core values were coarsely trampled over during a tyrannical overreach of elected officials.
• How is the responsibility of the state defined versus the responsibility of the individual? Is the onus of responsibility on state or individual? What is the limit that state can dictate to individual?
• How can the news media be guaranteed to be balanced? Permitting one voice, one opinion, is not balanced.
• Why were established scientific guidelines – including those espoused by the WHO prior to the pandemic – suddenly rewritten with no justification? This includes the rationale behind imposing a single clinical model of treatment rather than exploiting the diversity of medical and scientific resources worldwide in order to establish both the actual severity of the pandemic and possible prophylactic and clinical treatments.
• The accuracy of scientific modelling and to what extent if any, that models were updated and corrected by actual outcomes. The reasons why SAGE models used were not just badly wrong, but always wrong in the same direction. The role of scientific modelling in guiding Government policy.
• The descriptions given to modelled outcomes (e.g. ‘reasonable worst case’) and how those descriptions came to be interpreted by the media.
• The use of out-of-date data by the Prime Minister and his advisers to support policy.
• The failure to model or consider financial or any other medical outcomes besides Covid.
• The actual data which were used to justify the wearing of face masks and the resulting impacts on adults and children of compulsory face masks.
• The actual data which were used to justify or support lockdowns.
• The allowance of SAGE members to make regular media appearances to push, support or influence policy.
• The role of OFCOM in shutting down opinions on media at variance with Government policy. The role of the media – particularly television – in maintaining a substantial element of fear of Covid among the population. The actual or implied requirement to publish daily Covid data on television – ignoring deaths from all other causes – and therefore missing context. The role of the media in failing to challenge NPI’s other than to demand that they should have been stricter and sooner.
• The failure of the Government to allow a ‘devil’s advocate’ or ‘red team’ approach within its policymaking.
• The failure of the various financial support schemes to interrogate basic Companies House, HMC&E and Bank records to minimise the predictable large scale fraud which occurred
• The (continuing) failure of GP surgeries to conduct an acceptable level of face-to-face consultations.
• A full breakdown of who benefited from the PPE and other contracts and by how much.
• The glacial emergence from restrictions in spring 2021 when infections were extremely low.
• Why the Downing Street civil service thought it was acceptable to party at a time when the populace couldn’t see their dying parents.

There’s still time to submit your responses to the inquiry consultation. You can do so here.